Hi, I was born and raised in Richmond, Virginia, #RVA, the daughter of a Civil War historian. Some thoughts about Monument Avenue: A Thread.
These are my favorite statues: Arthur Ashe and the children, put up during my lifetime after ugly quarrels; and Matthew Fontaine Maury. https://twitter.com/venetianblonde/status/900067150798434304

Maury was called "Pathfinder of the Ocean Seas." He scientifically mapped the world's oceans. He was also, at the end of his naval career, a Confederate officer. He's gone now, but I LOVE it that they left Frederick William Sievers' great ocean globe: https://twitter.com/venetianblonde/status/1127904535664574465?s=20

On the plinth where Maury once sat, let there be placed a statue of a local girl, who lived on this land before it was called "Virginia." She was a princess of her people, and her name was Matoaka, or Pocahontas. Born in the mid-1590s, she was a girl when English settlers...

...arrived in the great eastern bay. Swiftly she learned their language, saved their lives, and married one, John Rolfe. They went to England and she had a son, Thomas. She died off Gravesend, England, sailing home, when she was not yet 21. Her descendants live in Virginia still.

Pocahontas was a legend in her own lifetime, and she should stand on that now-vacant stone plinth, not as "Rebecca Rolfe" but as her teenage self, in front of the ocean globe that can now honor the waters she crossed to the so-called Old Country, a new country, to her.

Heading on down Monument Avenue in an easterly direction toward Capitol Square (and removing the stray cannon that are scattered in its median), the next memorial we come to — CAME TO — is that to Stonewall Jackson. This stunning image by Susan Worsham shows its removal:

Where Jackson no longer stands "like a stone wall," let there be a statue to Edgar Allan Poe. Raised in Richmond's Shockoe bottom, on the James River banks, by a prominent local miller named Allan, Poe attended @UVA and considered himself a Virginian. Romantic poet, master of...

...macabre fiction, creator of the detective story, editor of the Richmond-based arts journal The Southern Literary Messenger for many years, Poe should be seated at a desk, writing — perhaps with a raven perched nearby.

Next we come to the memorial to the "Confederate States of America," which until recently had a statue of Confederate "president" Jefferson Davis in the middle. This statue always made my father angriest; "This particular traitor wasn't even born in Virginia," he'd fume.

When I was a kid people would shinny up on Saturday nights and put things in Davis's outstretched hand: beer cans, underpants, a bra. (I disclaim any knowledge of any such treatment of the statue when I was a teenager myself, ahem.)
He's down, now.

Where Davis once stood, let nothing stand. I'd like to see this memorial, with its grandiose words carved on the stone, and the more accurate tags and graffiti now on it, left just as it is — with this addition. Let a statue of Richmond native Bill "Bojangles" Robinson be added.

Yes, I know there is already a statue to Bojangles in Richmond. LET'S HAVE TWO. He was one of the most popular entertainers in the country. Here's more about him: https://www.nodepression.com/mr-bojangles-dance/

Just imagine with me how fine it would be to have a statue or "Mr. Bojangles" dancing down the steps of this tagged memorial. Mr. Bill Robinson, Richmonder, born during "Reconstruction," free and successful and famous forever, dancing on the grave of the Confederate States.

The statue of Robert E. Lee, on his horse Traveller, is the largest and best-known — most notorious — of the Monument Avenue statues. @GovernorVA has already said it will come down. Good. Leave the stone plinth as it is, with its tags and graffiti. At the base of it, I'd love...

...to see instead the sculpture of two ladies seated in conversation, on a bench, with books beside them. They are Richmonders Maggie Walker and Ellen Glasgow. Walker was an African-American educator and teacher; Glasgow a popular novelist. Let them replace Lee.

The last of the Confederate statues on Monument Avenue is that of cavalry leader James Ewell Brown "J.E.B." Stuart. He's in full gallop on one of his cavalry ponies; he was riding one when he was shot at Yellow Tavern, north of Richmond, in 1862.

On the plinth where "JEB" and his pony once stood, please place the perfect local legend: a horse named Secretariat. Born just north of Yellow Tavern, about 30 miles from Richmond, Secretariat is one of my personal favorite fellow Virginians. Record-breaker, breath-taker, this...

...beautiful horse deserves a monument, and a sculpture of Secretariat, riderless and roaming in a green Virginia field, would be the truly prefect replacement for Stuart and his pony.
Thank you for reading — and thank you, Richmond, for the way you are becoming now.